Sunday, July 6, 2008

roundup: urban chickens in the news

I've been away on travel and came home to find a whole bunch of news items regarding urban chickens in my mailbox. Here's a quick overview of urban chicken news from all over the USA (geographic names linked to sources):

Arkansas: legality of owning hens varies from city to city while roosters seem universally banned. A resident in Green Forest actually paid for radio ads encouraging neighbors to ban urban chickens altogether!

Asheville, NC: Trying to change law to allow chickens as close as 25 feet to neighbors (current law requires 100 feet), limit to nine hens per household and no roosters. You can subscribe to the ashevillecitychickens@yahoogroups.com forum to follow along.

Colorado Springs, CO: celebrating the spread of backyard chicken farming. Up to ten hens allowed in city limits. Longmont considering following Ft Collins (see above) in dropping their bans.

Ft Collins, CO: City Council to vote in September whether to allow up to six chickens per household within city limits. Chickens may need licenses (just like cats and dogs)

Houston, TX: a cautionary tale of following the rules on keeping chickens in the city limits or face forfeiture of your flock.

Lihue, HI: urban chickens of another sort: feral chickens all over the island of Kauai. The story hypothesizes how they got there (hurricane aftermath?) and what's being done to try to cull the several-thousand-strong flock.

Salt Lake City, UT: a run-down on the June 28 "Tour de coops" in which 100 people toured coops across the city. No word on how much overlap there was between the tour takers and the 80 people who attended an urban chickens workshop earlier in the week put on by the Wasatch Community Gardens.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say keeping urban chickens is quite the widespread phenomenon and not some obscure indulgence as others might make it out to be!